Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how the tech are you? It is time for the news for Thursday, May twenty two, and we got a bunch of it to get through, a lot of short pieces, but there are a lot of them, So let's just get to it, shall we. And we'll start off with just a quick update on the ongoing Twitter Elon Musk situation, because we've been covering that extensively already. In the last couple of weeks, if you recall, Musk announced that his deal to acquire Twitter is currently on hold while he demands that Twitter provide proof that their estimation that less than five percent of all monetize herbal accounts on the platform are bots. They he wants to say, like, well, prove that you've said it. But unless it's true, uh, this this deal is not going forward, And some folks speculate the perhaps Musk is maneuvering to either lower the price of the deal after he's already agreed to it, or to extract himself completely from the deal. Now that stocks have really taken a tumble, because that does mean that that forty four billion dollar price tag that he agreed upon is way over market value at this point. And now Twitter's board says, no, man, we're holding you to the deal. More precisely, Twitter Sentald a proxy statement that said it wishes to complete the deal as soon as is practicable and that they look to quote enforce the merger agreement end quote, which suggests that the board is willing to use legal pressure to hold Elon to his agreed upon deal. Now, just to be clear, that still does not mean that Musk owning Twitter is a sure thing. If the matter does go to litigation, There's a chance, maybe even a good chance, that the parties will end up settling the matter out of court and must will have to pay Twitter to essentially go away, which is weird right Anyway. There's more speculation now about what could happen next should the deal actually fall through, which some people say is like a fifty fifty chance or maybe even higher than that. H and some folks like techn dirts Mike Masnick suggests that Twitter's board will end up looking for another suitor if this deal does fall through to buy the company because they appear to have quote no clue what to do with it end quote. Yesterday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or n h t s A here in the United States announced that it was investigating a fatal car crash that killed three people on May twelve. The vehicle that was involved was a Tesla, and the n h T s A team is looking to determine whether or not the Tesla was operating in a mode like autopilot or full self driving. The Tesla Model S hit a curb at five in the morning, and then it went on to collide with some construction equipment. The three fatalities were all people inside the Tesla. Three construction workers also suffered minor injuries. Over at Meta, the company continues to ease off growing various departments and divisions, and that in turn has prompted a little bit of anxiety among employees. According to The Verge, Meta's twenty two has been a little rough so far, with the company reporting a net loss of active users on platforms like Facebook during the first quarter of two, and then the company's stock price has dipped in value by forty three percent this year. Uh and in response, Zuckerberg and his executives have adjusted their plans towards the end of one really the fall of one. To call Meta slash Facebook's strategy aggressive would have been an understatement. The incredible investment into developing the Metaverse, along with the commitment to developing new mixed reality hardware UH, initiatives aimed at attracting younger people to come onto the various platforms, even the renaming of the company itself to Meta, all of that pointed at a sort of full steam ahead mentality. But that twenty twenty two Q one report, coupled with the high profile PR disaster of Francis Hogan's revelations of internal documents detailing all sorts of negative stuff about the company, those all changed things up pretty fast. Now Meta is putting on a hiring freeze for certain departments. UH. They have frozen hiring of new data scientists as well as recruiters. So, in other words, the company is hitting pause on a few division and departments, at least as far as growth is concerned. So those groups aren't going away, they're not dissolved or anything like that, but they also are not going to grow any larger for the time being affected. Departments include Messenger, Kids, Facebook Gaming, Facebook Dating, the Remote Presence department, and the Commerce department. The company is still hiring and other divisions, particularly in the divisions that are responsible for developing artificial intelligent systems UH. And this kind of couples up with an earlier report we talked about that revealed the company is also shelving a few projects in the Reality Labs division, which is the part of the company that creates mixed reality hardware. We've been told that some of those projects are going to be at least postponed, if not canceled. However, I have not yet seen any clarification on which of those projects are going to be affected. Zuckerberg attempted to reassure employees by communicating that Meta is still in a very strong position, and it would be weird to say otherwise. I mean, any company that has a couple of billion users is in a pretty strong position. It's not like they're on the brink, as we used to say on the other show I hosted for a while, Business on the Brink. But he also said that while he can't make any promises that there aren't going to be layoffs at some point there are no current plans to go that route, So he said essentially like, we aren't planning on firing anyone, but if we do have other unforeseen events have a negative impact on the company, we may have to revisit that in the future. In other words, you can never say for sure what's going to happen, but there are no plans as of now to lay anyone off. Meta also released its May quarterly report, in which it revealed stats about its attempts to moderate content on its various platforms. I'll mostly be in fact, I'll really only be focusing on Facebook for this particular news item, but it did cover their other platforms too, so the full report is available to read online. Anyone can go there and check it out, and it categorizes content moderation in different buckets, such as posts that are about violence or drugs or firearms or self harm or child endangerment, and et cetera. The report reveals that on the Facebook platform, there were numerous cases of content moderation going too far, so in other words, uh, Facebook ended up removing posts that did not in fact violate Facebook's policies on content. For example, in that first quarter, Facebook moderators, whether human or AI, because Facebook uses both. Actioned on that's Facebook's term, which means took some form of action on two and a half million posts, uh that were identified as containing material promoting terrorism and or organized hate groups, and out of those, Facebook later restored four hundred fourteen thousand posts. The vast majority of those were restored without anyone having appealed the initial decision to remove the content, So, uh, you know, that means that Facebook recognized its own mistake. In other words, Meta also revealed that COVID nineteen had a big impact on their capacity to review appeals, which suggests to me that the number of restored pieces could have been even higher if Meta had had the capacity to process more appeals. But that's just speculation on my part. Other categories show similar trends. Wasn't just in uh, you know, organized hate and terrorism posts? Facebook restored hundreds of thousands of posts, either after an appeal or otherwise after determining that the posts did not in fact violate platform policies. Now, this really illustrates how content moderation is hard, particularly when your platform has reached a gargantuan size like Facebook has, It is necessary to do content moderation, but it's not easy to get it right. Of course, it is also impossible for us to quantify how many posts that did violate policies were missed. Now, surely there were lots of them, but we don't know how many. There's no way to know, right unless you were to actively go out seeking them and then just track to see whether or not they stay up or if they're taken down. Uh, And even then it would just be an estimate based upon whatever you were able to observe. So we don't have any data on that. We do know that Facebook has been cited numerous times as a platform that tends to amp lafi harmful messages, some of which might actually skirt around official policies, which means Facebook would not be able to respond to those without first updating those policies. Right. We had that representative from Facebook's oversight board, and one of the important jobs that board has is to make sure that when Facebook is enforcing its rules, the rules actually give Facebook that authority. Right, The Facebook can't just remove something for no reason. It has to have a stated reason that users have agreed to by you know, agreeing to to be part of the Facebook platform. In order for them to be able to do that, they cannot do it with impunity. There has to be reason behind it, so it is really tricky. It is a tight rope that you have to walk, and then finding a way to do that efficiently across such an enormous platform presents a different challenge altogether. So it is complicated it and it is messy. So good luck Elon Musk. If you do end up with Twitter, you might find it more hard work than you bargained for because free speech absolutists often are going to get a pretty rude wake up call when that free speech is used to do things that are, you know, just really dangerous and hazardous sometimes to the platforms themselves. Now, back when I was active on social networks, one thing I really didn't like was getting added into groups without being asked if I was okay with that first, because it creates a kind of social obligation that I wasn't seeking, and if I had no intention of joining the group, it gets awkward, particularly if when I leave the group, my departure is broadcast to everyone else who's in that group. That just invites the opportunity for those folks to reach out and say, hey, why do you leave the group? And I just want to be grouchy and alone and listen to neutral milk Hotel Well. Meta is experimenting with a feature in WhatsApp that would allow people who are in group messaging instances to leave that group without it being broadcast to everyone else there. Uh, the admin for the group would be notified, but no one else would. And it lets you do the classic Irish exit or the French leave. That's when you dip out of a social gathering without first saying goodbye or making the rounds one last time, or making it a big thing. That's actually how I prefer to leave a party. But it's because I've been through the opposite experience and it find I find it exasperating. I know too many actors, and if you go to a party with actors and your ride happens to be an actor, you might find that you're there for an additional hour and a half after you said you were gonna go, because your ride, the actor has to go and say goodbye to every single other person. They're including people that they had never met before that at night. And it could just be that I'm becoming a misanthrope. In fact, that's almost certainly the case. Anyway, the feature for WhatsApp is reportedly in the testing phase, so there's no guarantee that it will ever be rolled out to the service at large. But I'm sure folks who are like me who are on WhatsApp would really like that option. As for myself, I'm not on WhatsApp, but if I were, I would eagerly be awaiting that feature to get rolled out into the service. All Right, we've got a lot more stories to cover today. Before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Hey, y'all, let's chat about Google next. The Russian subsidiary of Google has declared bankruptcy. That might sound weird because we all know Google is a massive company has a huge amount of of money, or at least value. So how could a citiary of Google declare bankruptcy. Well, earlier this year, the Russian government seized the subsidiaries bank account, and that meant that Google's Russian subsidiary had no means to access its finances. It could not do stuff like, you know, pay people for working at Google, and so Google closed up shop. The company also has not been selling ads in Russia due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, so they had already stopped that activity. In fact, that's part of the reason why the government seized the assets, and the company says it is committed to providing services like Gmail and YouTube access to Russia, so those services are not going away. The Russian government has been hitting the company with fines for doing stuff like allowing media outlets that don't have state support upload content to YouTube, but so far the government has not taken the drastic step to actually cut off access at the I s P level for stuff like YouTube, presumably because if they did so, they would upset too many Russians, and the desire to control the narrative gets outweighed by the fear that the Russian people would get upset enough to potentially oppose the government. It's a delicate balance when you are running an authoritarian regime strategy. The Intercept reports that shareholders in Google and Amazon will soon have the opportunity to vote on resolutions that could force those two companies to re evaluate their involvement in Project Nimbus. So, if you're not familiar with Project Nimbus, that is Israel's push to create a cloud computer infrastructure that has all of the components within the borders of Israel itself, So a domestic cloud service, you might wonder why would Israel want to do that. Well, if all the servers and the rest of the infrastructure for the cloud computing system are within Israel's own borders, then that service gets insulated from international pressures. So should Israel do something that the international community objects to, such as, you know, launch an invasive surveillance program that uses the cloud computing infrastructure as the backbone, or perhaps lean on cloud computing technology to create oppressive measures that are used against a Palestinians. The cloud services would remain untouched because the international community would have no authority to get involved on any of that. So critics of Project Nimbus have pointed to these sort of possibilities as reasons that these companies should abandoned that project, that other countries would not be able to hold Israel accountable in the in the event that it would initiate policies that could violate human rights, at least not by disrupting those operations by cutting off access to cloud services. So shareholders are going to vote on resolutions that, if passed, would force Google and Amazon to conduct thorough invest stigations into the operation and determine whether or not the project would lead to enabling Israel to commit human rights abuses. Shareholders could support the resolution for a number of reasons. An obvious one is that there are probably some shareholders who would be concerned about the impact these technologies could have on you know, vulnerable people. But another big reason is that a negative perception of Project Nimbus could end up hurting the companies, which in turn could hurt the stock price, which ultimately hurts investors, you know, shareholders. So there are altruistic and more selfish motivators at play here, and and to be clear, I think a lot of folks would experience some of both. Like I don't think everyone is purely in one camp or another. I think there are people who are going to take these things into account and say I don't like what they're doing, and I also don't want to see my investments suffer. Whether that's going to be enough to get a majority of shareholders to back those resolutions remains to be seen. We also have to keep in mind that these really big government projects have really big price tags attached to them. They bring in a ton of money to these companies. So it's also possible that shareholders will reject the resolutions because that money is seen as a very valuable asset for the companies that the shareholders are invested in. We'll have to wait and see. The state of New York has filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging that the company has engaged in discrimination against certain employees, namely employees who are disabled or pregnant. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of forcing those employees of making the choice of either taking unpaid leave or they have to work in unaccommodating conditions, and that furthermore, the company authorized managers to deny recommendations from accommodation consultants, according to Business Insiders, So in other words, they hired consultants to come in and say, how can we make sure that this this workplace UH follows regulations and has those accommodations for people who need them. And the consultants gave their recommendations, but then Amazon told managers, yeah, you don't have to follow those if you don't want to. According to the lawsuit, that is and this is very early on in the process at the time of recording. In fact, as I'm recording this, Business Insider had not yet received a comment from Amazon representatives addressing the matter. That might have changed by the time you hear this, so it will likely be something that will touch on in future episodes. Corporate Apple employees have a temporary reprieve from the mandate that would require them to return to the office three days a week. They are currently under a mandate that requires them to be there two days out of the week from my understanding, but the three day mandate was supposed to take effect on May twenty three. You might remember from an earlier Tech News episode that this was one of the reason and is previously cited as why some Apple employees were considering leaving the company. That was actually part of a survey which had a fairly small sample size, so it's actually hard to say how many employees were seriously considering this, let alone how many would have actually gone through with it. But people were pointing at maree is being kind of a a pivotal moment, and that if the company continued to require people to come in three days out of the week, there was going to be the the equivalent of a mass exodus or at least a significant exodus of employees. But that mandate is now on hold and there is no new date yet that is going to require folks to come out and work in the office three days out of the week. So why did the company change its mind or rather, why did the company executives change their minds? Well, Apple says it's because of a rise in COVID nineteen cases. Now, I do think it's weird that COVID nineteen rates would cause a company to pau cause bringing workers in three times a week, But twice a week is still okay. Now, you could argue there's potential for a less overlap if people are coming in two days out of the week, because maybe one person comes in Monday Tuesday and someone else comes in Wednesday, Thursday or Thursday Friday. So those two people are never going to interact, right, and thus that limitation cuts down on the possibility of COVID spreading in those specific cases, I guess. But you would really think that if COVID were truly the motivating factor to hold off on bringing people in three days out of the week, you might go back to a remote work strategy entirely, at least until the COVID nineteen rates go down again. But you know, maybe I'm just being unreasonable here. Anyway, One person who did leave Apple, reportedly at least in part because of the company's policy on remote work, was Ian Goodfellow, and formerly he served as the director of machine learning at Apple. Good Fellow is now set to join Alphabet, you know, Google's parent company. So this is a high profile example of someone leaving one company, and at least part of the reason for leaving it was due to the demand to return to the office at least three days out of the week. Yikes. Down in Atlanta, that's my hometown. Apple stands accused of violating the National Labor Relations Act. Employees claim that Apple forced them to attend meetings meant to discourage unionization. Now, historically in the United States, the National Labor Relations Board has accepted that captive audience meetings those are meetings where employers can force employees to go to the meeting and listen to anti union messaging. The n l r B has previously said that does not actually violate the law. However, the n l RBS General counsel, a woman named Jennifer Abruzzo, says that that stance is predicated upon a misinterpretation of an employer's right of free speech, and in fact, is an opposition of the intent of the National Labor Relations Act, which is to protect employees freedom of choice. So she's saying, we have to change the policy because it's in violation of what the Act is supposed to do. So this is a pretty fluid situation, not just for Apple, but for the interpretation of law. And it really shows that, you know, making rules is tricky and complicated, and sometimes there are loopholes. So we'll have to see how this plays out. We've got more stories, including more legal loopholes in just a moment, but first let's take a quick break. We're back, and we're not quite done with Apple yet. So a Texas judge has denied Apple the company's request to relitigate a matter that currently has the company on the hook to pay a three hundred million dollar fee to another company called Optus. All right, So all of this stems from a patent dispute. Back in twenty nineteen, Optus sued Apple and accused Apple of making illegal use of patented technologies that Optus held and that the company thus infringed upon five patents relating to four G LTE technology, in other words, cellular tech of the four G era of of of wireless communications. So that matter went to trial and a jury found Apple guilty of those charges and ultimately decided that Apple should have to pay Optus a half billion dollars billion with a B that is a lot of money. However, a court then subsequently overturned that verdict because the jury had not yet heard evidence that suggested Optus failed to provide a licensing option that was fair, reasonable and non discriminatory or frand f R A n D, which meant Apple possibly didn't have a valid option to follow, at least one that wasn't predatory, and that that should factor into the jury's decision regarding Apple's punishment. So the overturning wasn't saying that Apple was innocent of the crime, but rather the punishment did not necessarily fit the crime because of other circumstances. So in a subsequent court trial, which again was only meant to arrive at a new figure for damages, the judge denied Apple the ability to fully relitigate the whole thing. The new jury adjusted the damages down to just a paltry three hundred billion dollars. And yes, I'm being sarcastic. Apple sought out an option to get a new trial, to throw that out and to retry the matter. Uh, and that's where this Texas judge said, yeah, no, dice. Apple can still appeal this to a higher court, which I imagine is what is going to happen next. And these trials get pretty tricky. Now. On the one hand, patent infringement is a real problem. We have seen massive lawsuits in technology over the matter. Apple and Samsung had a long history of hitting each other with patent infringement lawsuits. On another hand, cause in this case, I actually have more than two hands. There are some companies that hoard patents expressly for the purpose of extorting other companies, and we call those organizations patent trolls. They're known for holding onto patents, but otherwise they don't do a dang thing. So in other words, they don't make anything, and they're not actively using the intellectual property that has been patented. They just exist to deny other and he is the option of using that design unless those of the companies either cough up a huge amount of money in licensing fees, or sometimes they don't even give the option of licensing the tech. They're just waiting for someone to violate that patent and then threaten them with a massive lawsuit in an effort to get usually a big settlement out of it. Then, on the third hand, which I should probably have someone look at, if Optus wasn't offering fair licensing options, that needs to be addressed. I don't think companies should just use the technical designs and then brave the consequences the way Apple appears to have done. There has to be a better way to ensure fairness in the system, because if you go with a pure free market approach, what that means is a lot of companies will just not go down certain pathways, and that means that the rest of us never get to benefit from that patented invention until you know, the patent expires, so it hurts people in the long run. The whole purpose of patents is to protect innovation and to inspire people to innovate, because if their ideas are protected, then they have the incentive to pursue those ideas. If the ideas aren't protected, then people are going to say, well, what's the point in me innovating, someone else is just going to steal my idea and make money off of it. That's why patents exist. The problem is there are some individuals and companies out there that have turned patents into a war club as opposed to a way to incentivize innovation. All right, enough about that, let's move on the information. As in the news outlet reports that according to a survey, Netflix is losing more long term subscribers, namely that of people who canceled Netflix services in the first quarter of two were made up of folks who had been Netflix customers for at least three years. That is a really bad number for Netflix. It's one thing to have trouble holding onto new users, but it's another when long term customers are leaving the platform. Now of all cancelations doesn't sound so huge in the grand scheme of things, but it does mark an increase because at the end of twenty one, long term users made up just six percent of all cancelations. As for what is prompting folks to leave, that's probably a mixture of factors. Um One is that Netflix has lost access to a ton of content as various studios have launched their own streaming platforms, and then they've migrated their properties off of Netflix once agreements expire, and then they stream them on their own native services, like you know, we've seen that with Peacock, for example. Another is that there are just a ton of different streaming options out there, so competition shi is a lot more fierce than it used to be. And yet another is that Netflix has increased the subscription price a few times over the last couple of years, and that puts Netflix in a more expensive tier than a lot of its competitors. And if something gets expensive enough, then folks who use the service and frequently are more likely to say something like why how are we paying for this? We don't watch no Netflix no more, and then they go through the trouble of canceling that subscription. In fact, I should fall into that category. I should be the one saying it and exactly that that tone of voice, because I'm a Netflix customer, but I very rarely watch anything on Netflix these days. Then again, I rarely watch anything at all that isn't a YouTube series. In fact, why am I paying for all that? Do you know what? This isn't the place for that? Anyway, Netflix has found itself in a bit of a crisis mode right now, trying to find a new strategy that will reverse this trend of people leaving the platform. Trend is hard. I shouldn't really say trend because Q one two was the first time in Netflix history that it had a net loss of users. But anyway, Netflix wants to reverse that. They don't want to see that number go down again for Q two, and so they also are looking for new ways to generate revenue, perhaps by incorporating advertisements and launching a lower cost subscription tier. And they also want to cut costs, which we've mainly seen the form of stuff like Netflix canceling several projects, including a ton in the animation department that have me really upset because I was looking forward to an animated adaptation of the comic book series Bone Gush, darn it, and now we're not gonna get it over. In India, the government has passed a policy that will require VPN services to collect data on their users. So VPN stands for virtual Private network. The way this works is essentially, it's a service that lets you log into a server and then browse the Internet as if your computer was that server. So from the perspective of the sites that you visit, or for anyone who's snooping on traffic that's going to those sites. All the traffic is coming from that server, and all the return traffic is going to that server. It's not going to you. Now, someone who is really doing a lot of snooping might be able to see that you are connected to this VPN server, and they would be able to see that traffic going from that VPN server is going to these other sites, but they would not be able to tell if you were visiting any of those sites. For all, the snooper knows you're using the VPN, but all you're doing is logging in to read the news, so you're not going to anything you know, salacious or whatever or illegal. Well, the more authoritarian governments really hate this practice because it means they can't tell what you're up to, and they really want to know what you're up to. So that's why the Indian past this policy mandating that VPN services, even those that are operating outside of India but that offer services to Indian citizens, have to collect data on their users. Now, for many VPN services, one of the big selling features is that they explicitly do not collect data on their users, or if they do collect any data, they regularly delete that data like typically on a daily basis, which offers security and privacy because even if authorities went to the VPN and demanded that the company hand over all their user data, the VPN and its users are in the clear because there's no data to hand over. Now, this new policy is not yet in effect. That will change in late June. Already, several VPN providers have objected to this policy, and several of them have pointed out that their technology means they literally cannot comply with that policy because they have no technology to log user data in the first place. That is not part of their their suite of features. They can't do it. They would have to build that capability into their services. The Indian government has remained steadfast, however, essentially saying, hey, these are the rules, you abide by them, or you stop providing services to customers in India, so rough deal. Um. I'm always against policies that end up infringing upon privacy and personal security. There are a lot of very legitimate reasons to use a VPN that have nothing to do with illegal activity or sometimes they do have to do with illegal activity, but the reason that the activity is illegal is because the government is repressing citizens. So I'm talking about stuff like expressing opinions that run counter to the government's position on things like if that ends up being illegal in that country, that's repressive. I'm not I'm not talking about, you know, using it to get around things like like drug laws and stuff. To me, that gets a lot more tricky, and you have to look at things on a case by case basis, but you get what I'm saying. Finally, in a segment that I'm going to call how engineers are solving important problems, let's talk about burritos. A well made burrito is a thing of beauty. It should be filled to a point where there's a little give when you pick the burrito up. And now, you don't want so much meat or vegetables or whatever in that burrito that the burrito just disintegrates as you pick it up and content spew out like some sort of horror movie. But you also don't want to limp burrito that lameley just folds over your hand, because you can just imagine that burrito whimpering as you pick it up. You want a burrito has the right amount of stuff inside it, and you want that burrito to maintain structural integrity as you dive hour it. After all, we all know that the proper way to eat a burrito is to use your hands, resorting to a knife and four a quhile sometimes necessary, really just means you're admitting defeat. But how do you help ensure that a burrito will maintain that structural integrity as you eat it and not just flop open mid bite causing a big goopy mess. To paraphrase Paul Blart, mal clup too well, what if you taped the burrito shut? That might solve that structural problem. But tape isn't edible until now. Yeah, Engineering students at John Hopkins University have developed an edible tape fittingly called Tasty tape. Tasty is spelled with two ease at the end instead of a hy. So it's an adhesive that can be used on food items, and not just burritos, but other stuff like euros or gyros if you prefer wraps or and this next one since shivers down my spine food art, you could probably hear the air quotes I did as I said that. Now, the engineers created the tape out of quote food grade fibrous scaffold and organic adhesive end quote. They've filed for a patent, and they're a bit kg describing what they used to do this, because obviously they don't want someone else to just steal the formula. But they do say that everything they used is food grade and safe and consists of quote common food and dietary additives end quote, so it's not like they snuck in some guerrilla glue in there or anything. The product works by tearing a strip off a sheet of the stuff, soaking that strip in some water, and then applying said wet strip to whatever it is you need to tape shut. As it dries, it then becomes that that adhesive, so you might use it on that otherwise vulnerable Brito I for one, and thankful for this scientific breakthrough. And that's it for the news for Thursday, May nine, twenty two. If you have any comments or suggestions or questions or anything like that, there are a couple ways to get in touch with the show. One is you download the I Heart Radio app. Do you navigate to the text stuff page within that app, and there's a little microphone and if you tap on that, you can record an audio message up to thirty seconds long. If you do it for this episode, they'll be tagged with this episode. I'll be able to see that this is what you're commenting on. You can also just leave a comment on the show in general. Uh. If you have a suggestion for an episode, we might even use that audio clip to introduce the topic. So that's one way to reach out. The other way, of course, is to get in touch on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and that's it. I'll talk to you again, release soon Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how the tech are you? It is time for the news for Thursday, May twenty two, and we got a bunch of it to get through, a lot of short pieces, but there are a lot of them, So let's just get to it, shall we. And we'll start off with just a quick update on the ongoing Twitter Elon Musk situation, because we've been covering that extensively already. In the last couple of weeks, if you recall, Musk announced that his deal to acquire Twitter is currently on hold while he demands that Twitter provide proof that their estimation that less than five percent of all monetize herbal accounts on the platform are bots. They he wants to say, like, well, prove that you've said it. But unless it's true, uh, this this deal is not going forward, And some folks speculate the perhaps Musk is maneuvering to either lower the price of the deal after he's already agreed to it, or to extract himself completely from the deal. Now that stocks have really taken a tumble, because that does mean that that forty four billion dollar price tag that he agreed upon is way over market value at this point. And now Twitter's board says, no, man, we're holding you to the deal. More precisely, Twitter Sentald a proxy statement that said it wishes to complete the deal as soon as is practicable and that they look to quote enforce the merger agreement end quote, which suggests that the board is willing to use legal pressure to hold Elon to his agreed upon deal. Now, just to be clear, that still does not mean that Musk owning Twitter is a sure thing. If the matter does go to litigation, There's a chance, maybe even a good chance, that the parties will end up settling the matter out of court and must will have to pay Twitter to essentially go away, which is weird right Anyway. There's more speculation now about what could happen next should the deal actually fall through, which some people say is like a fifty fifty chance or maybe even higher than that. H and some folks like techn dirts Mike Masnick suggests that Twitter's board will end up looking for another suitor if this deal does fall through to buy the company because they appear to have quote no clue what to do with it end quote. Yesterday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or n h t s A here in the United States announced that it was investigating a fatal car crash that killed three people on May twelve. The vehicle that was involved was a Tesla, and the n h T s A team is looking to determine whether or not the Tesla was operating in a mode like autopilot or full self driving. The Tesla Model S hit a curb at five in the morning, and then it went on to collide with some construction equipment. The three fatalities were all people inside the Tesla. Three construction workers also suffered minor injuries. Over at Meta, the company continues to ease off growing various departments and divisions, and that in turn has prompted a little bit of anxiety among employees. According to The Verge, Meta's twenty two has been a little rough so far, with the company reporting a net loss of active users on platforms like Facebook during the first quarter of two, and then the company's stock price has dipped in value by forty three percent this year. Uh and in response, Zuckerberg and his executives have adjusted their plans towards the end of one really the fall of one. To call Meta slash Facebook's strategy aggressive would have been an understatement. The incredible investment into developing the Metaverse, along with the commitment to developing new mixed reality hardware UH, initiatives aimed at attracting younger people to come onto the various platforms, even the renaming of the company itself to Meta, all of that pointed at a sort of full steam ahead mentality. But that twenty twenty two Q one report, coupled with the high profile PR disaster of Francis Hogan's revelations of internal documents detailing all sorts of negative stuff about the company, those all changed things up pretty fast. Now Meta is putting on a hiring freeze for certain departments. UH. They have frozen hiring of new data scientists as well as recruiters. So, in other words, the company is hitting pause on a few division and departments, at least as far as growth is concerned. So those groups aren't going away, they're not dissolved or anything like that, but they also are not going to grow any larger for the time being affected. Departments include Messenger, Kids, Facebook Gaming, Facebook Dating, the Remote Presence department, and the Commerce department. The company is still hiring and other divisions, particularly in the divisions that are responsible for developing artificial intelligent systems UH. And this kind of couples up with an earlier report we talked about that revealed the company is also shelving a few projects in the Reality Labs division, which is the part of the company that creates mixed reality hardware. We've been told that some of those projects are going to be at least postponed, if not canceled. However, I have not yet seen any clarification on which of those projects are going to be affected. Zuckerberg attempted to reassure employees by communicating that Meta is still in a very strong position, and it would be weird to say otherwise. I mean, any company that has a couple of billion users is in a pretty strong position. It's not like they're on the brink, as we used to say on the other show I hosted for a while, Business on the Brink. But he also said that while he can't make any promises that there aren't going to be layoffs at some point there are no current plans to go that route, So he said essentially like, we aren't planning on firing anyone, but if we do have other unforeseen events have a negative impact on the company, we may have to revisit that in the future. In other words, you can never say for sure what's going to happen, but there are no plans as of now to lay anyone off. Meta also released its May quarterly report, in which it revealed stats about its attempts to moderate content on its various platforms. I'll mostly be in fact, I'll really only be focusing on Facebook for this particular news item, but it did cover their other platforms too, so the full report is available to read online. Anyone can go there and check it out, and it categorizes content moderation in different buckets, such as posts that are about violence or drugs or firearms or self harm or child endangerment, and et cetera. The report reveals that on the Facebook platform, there were numerous cases of content moderation going too far, so in other words, uh, Facebook ended up removing posts that did not in fact violate Facebook's policies on content. For example, in that first quarter, Facebook moderators, whether human or AI, because Facebook uses both. Actioned on that's Facebook's term, which means took some form of action on two and a half million posts, uh that were identified as containing material promoting terrorism and or organized hate groups, and out of those, Facebook later restored four hundred fourteen thousand posts. The vast majority of those were restored without anyone having appealed the initial decision to remove the content, So, uh, you know, that means that Facebook recognized its own mistake. In other words, Meta also revealed that COVID nineteen had a big impact on their capacity to review appeals, which suggests to me that the number of restored pieces could have been even higher if Meta had had the capacity to process more appeals. But that's just speculation on my part. Other categories show similar trends. Wasn't just in uh, you know, organized hate and terrorism posts? Facebook restored hundreds of thousands of posts, either after an appeal or otherwise after determining that the posts did not in fact violate platform policies. Now, this really illustrates how content moderation is hard, particularly when your platform has reached a gargantuan size like Facebook has, It is necessary to do content moderation, but it's not easy to get it right. Of course, it is also impossible for us to quantify how many posts that did violate policies were missed. Now, surely there were lots of them, but we don't know how many. There's no way to know, right unless you were to actively go out seeking them and then just track to see whether or not they stay up or if they're taken down. Uh, And even then it would just be an estimate based upon whatever you were able to observe. So we don't have any data on that. We do know that Facebook has been cited numerous times as a platform that tends to amp lafi harmful messages, some of which might actually skirt around official policies, which means Facebook would not be able to respond to those without first updating those policies. Right. We had that representative from Facebook's oversight board, and one of the important jobs that board has is to make sure that when Facebook is enforcing its rules, the rules actually give Facebook that authority. Right, The Facebook can't just remove something for no reason. It has to have a stated reason that users have agreed to by you know, agreeing to to be part of the Facebook platform. In order for them to be able to do that, they cannot do it with impunity. There has to be reason behind it, so it is really tricky. It is a tight rope that you have to walk, and then finding a way to do that efficiently across such an enormous platform presents a different challenge altogether. So it is complicated it and it is messy. So good luck Elon Musk. If you do end up with Twitter, you might find it more hard work than you bargained for because free speech absolutists often are going to get a pretty rude wake up call when that free speech is used to do things that are, you know, just really dangerous and hazardous sometimes to the platforms themselves. Now, back when I was active on social networks, one thing I really didn't like was getting added into groups without being asked if I was okay with that first, because it creates a kind of social obligation that I wasn't seeking, and if I had no intention of joining the group, it gets awkward, particularly if when I leave the group, my departure is broadcast to everyone else who's in that group. That just invites the opportunity for those folks to reach out and say, hey, why do you leave the group? And I just want to be grouchy and alone and listen to neutral milk Hotel Well. Meta is experimenting with a feature in WhatsApp that would allow people who are in group messaging instances to leave that group without it being broadcast to everyone else there. Uh, the admin for the group would be notified, but no one else would. And it lets you do the classic Irish exit or the French leave. That's when you dip out of a social gathering without first saying goodbye or making the rounds one last time, or making it a big thing. That's actually how I prefer to leave a party. But it's because I've been through the opposite experience and it find I find it exasperating. I know too many actors, and if you go to a party with actors and your ride happens to be an actor, you might find that you're there for an additional hour and a half after you said you were gonna go, because your ride, the actor has to go and say goodbye to every single other person. They're including people that they had never met before that at night. And it could just be that I'm becoming a misanthrope. In fact, that's almost certainly the case. Anyway, the feature for WhatsApp is reportedly in the testing phase, so there's no guarantee that it will ever be rolled out to the service at large. But I'm sure folks who are like me who are on WhatsApp would really like that option. As for myself, I'm not on WhatsApp, but if I were, I would eagerly be awaiting that feature to get rolled out into the service. All Right, we've got a lot more stories to cover today. Before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Hey, y'all, let's chat about Google next. The Russian subsidiary of Google has declared bankruptcy. That might sound weird because we all know Google is a massive company has a huge amount of of money, or at least value. So how could a citiary of Google declare bankruptcy. Well, earlier this year, the Russian government seized the subsidiaries bank account, and that meant that Google's Russian subsidiary had no means to access its finances. It could not do stuff like, you know, pay people for working at Google, and so Google closed up shop. The company also has not been selling ads in Russia due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, so they had already stopped that activity. In fact, that's part of the reason why the government seized the assets, and the company says it is committed to providing services like Gmail and YouTube access to Russia, so those services are not going away. The Russian government has been hitting the company with fines for doing stuff like allowing media outlets that don't have state support upload content to YouTube, but so far the government has not taken the drastic step to actually cut off access at the I s P level for stuff like YouTube, presumably because if they did so, they would upset too many Russians, and the desire to control the narrative gets outweighed by the fear that the Russian people would get upset enough to potentially oppose the government. It's a delicate balance when you are running an authoritarian regime strategy. The Intercept reports that shareholders in Google and Amazon will soon have the opportunity to vote on resolutions that could force those two companies to re evaluate their involvement in Project Nimbus. So, if you're not familiar with Project Nimbus, that is Israel's push to create a cloud computer infrastructure that has all of the components within the borders of Israel itself, So a domestic cloud service, you might wonder why would Israel want to do that. Well, if all the servers and the rest of the infrastructure for the cloud computing system are within Israel's own borders, then that service gets insulated from international pressures. So should Israel do something that the international community objects to, such as, you know, launch an invasive surveillance program that uses the cloud computing infrastructure as the backbone, or perhaps lean on cloud computing technology to create oppressive measures that are used against a Palestinians. The cloud services would remain untouched because the international community would have no authority to get involved on any of that. So critics of Project Nimbus have pointed to these sort of possibilities as reasons that these companies should abandoned that project, that other countries would not be able to hold Israel accountable in the in the event that it would initiate policies that could violate human rights, at least not by disrupting those operations by cutting off access to cloud services. So shareholders are going to vote on resolutions that, if passed, would force Google and Amazon to conduct thorough invest stigations into the operation and determine whether or not the project would lead to enabling Israel to commit human rights abuses. Shareholders could support the resolution for a number of reasons. An obvious one is that there are probably some shareholders who would be concerned about the impact these technologies could have on you know, vulnerable people. But another big reason is that a negative perception of Project Nimbus could end up hurting the companies, which in turn could hurt the stock price, which ultimately hurts investors, you know, shareholders. So there are altruistic and more selfish motivators at play here, and and to be clear, I think a lot of folks would experience some of both. Like I don't think everyone is purely in one camp or another. I think there are people who are going to take these things into account and say I don't like what they're doing, and I also don't want to see my investments suffer. Whether that's going to be enough to get a majority of shareholders to back those resolutions remains to be seen. We also have to keep in mind that these really big government projects have really big price tags attached to them. They bring in a ton of money to these companies. So it's also possible that shareholders will reject the resolutions because that money is seen as a very valuable asset for the companies that the shareholders are invested in. We'll have to wait and see. The state of New York has filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging that the company has engaged in discrimination against certain employees, namely employees who are disabled or pregnant. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of forcing those employees of making the choice of either taking unpaid leave or they have to work in unaccommodating conditions, and that furthermore, the company authorized managers to deny recommendations from accommodation consultants, according to Business Insiders, So in other words, they hired consultants to come in and say, how can we make sure that this this workplace UH follows regulations and has those accommodations for people who need them. And the consultants gave their recommendations, but then Amazon told managers, yeah, you don't have to follow those if you don't want to. According to the lawsuit, that is and this is very early on in the process at the time of recording. In fact, as I'm recording this, Business Insider had not yet received a comment from Amazon representatives addressing the matter. That might have changed by the time you hear this, so it will likely be something that will touch on in future episodes. Corporate Apple employees have a temporary reprieve from the mandate that would require them to return to the office three days a week. They are currently under a mandate that requires them to be there two days out of the week from my understanding, but the three day mandate was supposed to take effect on May twenty three. You might remember from an earlier Tech News episode that this was one of the reason and is previously cited as why some Apple employees were considering leaving the company. That was actually part of a survey which had a fairly small sample size, so it's actually hard to say how many employees were seriously considering this, let alone how many would have actually gone through with it. But people were pointing at maree is being kind of a a pivotal moment, and that if the company continued to require people to come in three days out of the week, there was going to be the the equivalent of a mass exodus or at least a significant exodus of employees. But that mandate is now on hold and there is no new date yet that is going to require folks to come out and work in the office three days out of the week. So why did the company change its mind or rather, why did the company executives change their minds? Well, Apple says it's because of a rise in COVID nineteen cases. Now, I do think it's weird that COVID nineteen rates would cause a company to pau cause bringing workers in three times a week, But twice a week is still okay. Now, you could argue there's potential for a less overlap if people are coming in two days out of the week, because maybe one person comes in Monday Tuesday and someone else comes in Wednesday, Thursday or Thursday Friday. So those two people are never going to interact, right, and thus that limitation cuts down on the possibility of COVID spreading in those specific cases, I guess. But you would really think that if COVID were truly the motivating factor to hold off on bringing people in three days out of the week, you might go back to a remote work strategy entirely, at least until the COVID nineteen rates go down again. But you know, maybe I'm just being unreasonable here. Anyway, One person who did leave Apple, reportedly at least in part because of the company's policy on remote work, was Ian Goodfellow, and formerly he served as the director of machine learning at Apple. Good Fellow is now set to join Alphabet, you know, Google's parent company. So this is a high profile example of someone leaving one company, and at least part of the reason for leaving it was due to the demand to return to the office at least three days out of the week. Yikes. Down in Atlanta, that's my hometown. Apple stands accused of violating the National Labor Relations Act. Employees claim that Apple forced them to attend meetings meant to discourage unionization. Now, historically in the United States, the National Labor Relations Board has accepted that captive audience meetings those are meetings where employers can force employees to go to the meeting and listen to anti union messaging. The n l r B has previously said that does not actually violate the law. However, the n l RBS General counsel, a woman named Jennifer Abruzzo, says that that stance is predicated upon a misinterpretation of an employer's right of free speech, and in fact, is an opposition of the intent of the National Labor Relations Act, which is to protect employees freedom of choice. So she's saying, we have to change the policy because it's in violation of what the Act is supposed to do. So this is a pretty fluid situation, not just for Apple, but for the interpretation of law. And it really shows that, you know, making rules is tricky and complicated, and sometimes there are loopholes. So we'll have to see how this plays out. We've got more stories, including more legal loopholes in just a moment, but first let's take a quick break. We're back, and we're not quite done with Apple yet. So a Texas judge has denied Apple the company's request to relitigate a matter that currently has the company on the hook to pay a three hundred million dollar fee to another company called Optus. All right, So all of this stems from a patent dispute. Back in twenty nineteen, Optus sued Apple and accused Apple of making illegal use of patented technologies that Optus held and that the company thus infringed upon five patents relating to four G LTE technology, in other words, cellular tech of the four G era of of of wireless communications. So that matter went to trial and a jury found Apple guilty of those charges and ultimately decided that Apple should have to pay Optus a half billion dollars billion with a B that is a lot of money. However, a court then subsequently overturned that verdict because the jury had not yet heard evidence that suggested Optus failed to provide a licensing option that was fair, reasonable and non discriminatory or frand f R A n D, which meant Apple possibly didn't have a valid option to follow, at least one that wasn't predatory, and that that should factor into the jury's decision regarding Apple's punishment. So the overturning wasn't saying that Apple was innocent of the crime, but rather the punishment did not necessarily fit the crime because of other circumstances. So in a subsequent court trial, which again was only meant to arrive at a new figure for damages, the judge denied Apple the ability to fully relitigate the whole thing. The new jury adjusted the damages down to just a paltry three hundred billion dollars. And yes, I'm being sarcastic. Apple sought out an option to get a new trial, to throw that out and to retry the matter. Uh, and that's where this Texas judge said, yeah, no, dice. Apple can still appeal this to a higher court, which I imagine is what is going to happen next. And these trials get pretty tricky. Now. On the one hand, patent infringement is a real problem. We have seen massive lawsuits in technology over the matter. Apple and Samsung had a long history of hitting each other with patent infringement lawsuits. On another hand, cause in this case, I actually have more than two hands. There are some companies that hoard patents expressly for the purpose of extorting other companies, and we call those organizations patent trolls. They're known for holding onto patents, but otherwise they don't do a dang thing. So in other words, they don't make anything, and they're not actively using the intellectual property that has been patented. They just exist to deny other and he is the option of using that design unless those of the companies either cough up a huge amount of money in licensing fees, or sometimes they don't even give the option of licensing the tech. They're just waiting for someone to violate that patent and then threaten them with a massive lawsuit in an effort to get usually a big settlement out of it. Then, on the third hand, which I should probably have someone look at, if Optus wasn't offering fair licensing options, that needs to be addressed. I don't think companies should just use the technical designs and then brave the consequences the way Apple appears to have done. There has to be a better way to ensure fairness in the system, because if you go with a pure free market approach, what that means is a lot of companies will just not go down certain pathways, and that means that the rest of us never get to benefit from that patented invention until you know, the patent expires, so it hurts people in the long run. The whole purpose of patents is to protect innovation and to inspire people to innovate, because if their ideas are protected, then they have the incentive to pursue those ideas. If the ideas aren't protected, then people are going to say, well, what's the point in me innovating, someone else is just going to steal my idea and make money off of it. That's why patents exist. The problem is there are some individuals and companies out there that have turned patents into a war club as opposed to a way to incentivize innovation. All right, enough about that, let's move on the information. As in the news outlet reports that according to a survey, Netflix is losing more long term subscribers, namely that of people who canceled Netflix services in the first quarter of two were made up of folks who had been Netflix customers for at least three years. That is a really bad number for Netflix. It's one thing to have trouble holding onto new users, but it's another when long term customers are leaving the platform. Now of all cancelations doesn't sound so huge in the grand scheme of things, but it does mark an increase because at the end of twenty one, long term users made up just six percent of all cancelations. As for what is prompting folks to leave, that's probably a mixture of factors. Um One is that Netflix has lost access to a ton of content as various studios have launched their own streaming platforms, and then they've migrated their properties off of Netflix once agreements expire, and then they stream them on their own native services, like you know, we've seen that with Peacock, for example. Another is that there are just a ton of different streaming options out there, so competition shi is a lot more fierce than it used to be. And yet another is that Netflix has increased the subscription price a few times over the last couple of years, and that puts Netflix in a more expensive tier than a lot of its competitors. And if something gets expensive enough, then folks who use the service and frequently are more likely to say something like why how are we paying for this? We don't watch no Netflix no more, and then they go through the trouble of canceling that subscription. In fact, I should fall into that category. I should be the one saying it and exactly that that tone of voice, because I'm a Netflix customer, but I very rarely watch anything on Netflix these days. Then again, I rarely watch anything at all that isn't a YouTube series. In fact, why am I paying for all that? Do you know what? This isn't the place for that? Anyway, Netflix has found itself in a bit of a crisis mode right now, trying to find a new strategy that will reverse this trend of people leaving the platform. Trend is hard. I shouldn't really say trend because Q one two was the first time in Netflix history that it had a net loss of users. But anyway, Netflix wants to reverse that. They don't want to see that number go down again for Q two, and so they also are looking for new ways to generate revenue, perhaps by incorporating advertisements and launching a lower cost subscription tier. And they also want to cut costs, which we've mainly seen the form of stuff like Netflix canceling several projects, including a ton in the animation department that have me really upset because I was looking forward to an animated adaptation of the comic book series Bone Gush, darn it, and now we're not gonna get it over. In India, the government has passed a policy that will require VPN services to collect data on their users. So VPN stands for virtual Private network. The way this works is essentially, it's a service that lets you log into a server and then browse the Internet as if your computer was that server. So from the perspective of the sites that you visit, or for anyone who's snooping on traffic that's going to those sites. All the traffic is coming from that server, and all the return traffic is going to that server. It's not going to you. Now, someone who is really doing a lot of snooping might be able to see that you are connected to this VPN server, and they would be able to see that traffic going from that VPN server is going to these other sites, but they would not be able to tell if you were visiting any of those sites. For all, the snooper knows you're using the VPN, but all you're doing is logging in to read the news, so you're not going to anything you know, salacious or whatever or illegal. Well, the more authoritarian governments really hate this practice because it means they can't tell what you're up to, and they really want to know what you're up to. So that's why the Indian past this policy mandating that VPN services, even those that are operating outside of India but that offer services to Indian citizens, have to collect data on their users. Now, for many VPN services, one of the big selling features is that they explicitly do not collect data on their users, or if they do collect any data, they regularly delete that data like typically on a daily basis, which offers security and privacy because even if authorities went to the VPN and demanded that the company hand over all their user data, the VPN and its users are in the clear because there's no data to hand over. Now, this new policy is not yet in effect. That will change in late June. Already, several VPN providers have objected to this policy, and several of them have pointed out that their technology means they literally cannot comply with that policy because they have no technology to log user data in the first place. That is not part of their their suite of features. They can't do it. They would have to build that capability into their services. The Indian government has remained steadfast, however, essentially saying, hey, these are the rules, you abide by them, or you stop providing services to customers in India, so rough deal. Um. I'm always against policies that end up infringing upon privacy and personal security. There are a lot of very legitimate reasons to use a VPN that have nothing to do with illegal activity or sometimes they do have to do with illegal activity, but the reason that the activity is illegal is because the government is repressing citizens. So I'm talking about stuff like expressing opinions that run counter to the government's position on things like if that ends up being illegal in that country, that's repressive. I'm not I'm not talking about, you know, using it to get around things like like drug laws and stuff. To me, that gets a lot more tricky, and you have to look at things on a case by case basis, but you get what I'm saying. Finally, in a segment that I'm going to call how engineers are solving important problems, let's talk about burritos. A well made burrito is a thing of beauty. It should be filled to a point where there's a little give when you pick the burrito up. And now, you don't want so much meat or vegetables or whatever in that burrito that the burrito just disintegrates as you pick it up and content spew out like some sort of horror movie. But you also don't want to limp burrito that lameley just folds over your hand, because you can just imagine that burrito whimpering as you pick it up. You want a burrito has the right amount of stuff inside it, and you want that burrito to maintain structural integrity as you dive hour it. After all, we all know that the proper way to eat a burrito is to use your hands, resorting to a knife and four a quhile sometimes necessary, really just means you're admitting defeat. But how do you help ensure that a burrito will maintain that structural integrity as you eat it and not just flop open mid bite causing a big goopy mess. To paraphrase Paul Blart, mal clup too well, what if you taped the burrito shut? That might solve that structural problem. But tape isn't edible until now. Yeah, Engineering students at John Hopkins University have developed an edible tape fittingly called Tasty tape. Tasty is spelled with two ease at the end instead of a hy. So it's an adhesive that can be used on food items, and not just burritos, but other stuff like euros or gyros if you prefer wraps or and this next one since shivers down my spine food art, you could probably hear the air quotes I did as I said that. Now, the engineers created the tape out of quote food grade fibrous scaffold and organic adhesive end quote. They've filed for a patent, and they're a bit kg describing what they used to do this, because obviously they don't want someone else to just steal the formula. But they do say that everything they used is food grade and safe and consists of quote common food and dietary additives end quote, so it's not like they snuck in some guerrilla glue in there or anything. The product works by tearing a strip off a sheet of the stuff, soaking that strip in some water, and then applying said wet strip to whatever it is you need to tape shut. As it dries, it then becomes that that adhesive, so you might use it on that otherwise vulnerable Brito I for one, and thankful for this scientific breakthrough. And that's it for the news for Thursday, May nine, twenty two. If you have any comments or suggestions or questions or anything like that, there are a couple ways to get in touch with the show. One is you download the I Heart Radio app. Do you navigate to the text stuff page within that app, and there's a little microphone and if you tap on that, you can record an audio message up to thirty seconds long. If you do it for this episode, they'll be tagged with this episode. I'll be able to see that this is what you're commenting on. You can also just leave a comment on the show in general. Uh. If you have a suggestion for an episode, we might even use that audio clip to introduce the topic. So that's one way to reach out. The other way, of course, is to get in touch on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and that's it. I'll talk to you again, release soon Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.